The Japanese Embassy in Kuwait gave refuge to 16 American diplomats and their families shortly after Iraq's invasion, then helped them escape from the emirate, Foreign Ministry officials said Thursday. The Foreign Ministry had kept silent about the matter because it feared any publicity might lead to Iraqi reprisals against Japanese citizens held in Kuwait, the officials said.

January 13, 1991 | Jenifer Warren, Jenifer Warren is a Times staff writer.

IT WAS SCARCELY PAST DAYBREAK, BUT ALREADY THE HEAT had arrived, settling in like an irksome visitor. August in Kuwait. Not as bad as July, with its interminable sandstorms, but still oppressive. It was Thursday, a workday. Jeff Sanislo, 33, stepped from his suburban home into his Chrysler Fifth Avenue and did what he did every morning--cranked the AC. Cool air flowing, the bearded businessman then motored off, beginning the 30-minute drive he had taken for nine years.

The uncertainty of it all, now that was the worst of it. Sitting and waiting for . . . what? Listening to the shortwave radios and hearing about the massive American military buildup in the desert. Being held prisoner at Iraqi military installations and wondering if the bombs really would drop. Waiting in Kuwait city apartments, listening for the knock at the door that would mean an escort north to Baghdad and . . . what? No one knew. No one could predict.

John and Michelle Richert spent the last 4 1/2 months in Kuwait, and they were terrified. In a country they had considered home, the Richerts made a fragile fortress out of a second-floor apartment by covering the windows with blankets and sealing the doors with towels to block noise. They had heard too often about fellow Westerners dragged into the streets by Iraqi soldiers. "Try to imagine keeping a burglar out of your apartment 24 hours a day," said Michelle Richert on Friday.

The waiting and uncertainty ended Monday for one local family upon learning that Awni Younis, a 43-year-old businessman in Kuwait, had safely left the region and is heading home to his wife and children in Orange County. "This is amazing," said Younis' son, Abdullah. "We kept on waiting and waiting. I didn't expect him home until after Christmas." Younis was one of the last people from Orange County known to remain in Kuwait since the Aug. 2 Iraqi invasion.

Mike Adams was already asleep when his father-in-law rapped on the bedroom door. Something bad is happening, he said. A late-night newscast had just flashed the bulletin that Iraqi forces had crossed the border and were moving into Kuwait. For Adams, the news could not have been more chilling. He lived in Kuwait city with his wife and two children and was in Houston only because he and his family were on home leave.

The latest hostage family from Orange County to be freed from Kuwait is expected to return here this weekend after appearing on ABC's PrimeTime Live on Thursday night. Michelle and John Richert, both 31, came out of hiding last week after Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's decision to release all Westerners.

President Bush adamantly declared Thursday that he will offer Iraqi President Saddam Hussein no reward for letting the hostages go. "Hell, no. Not one thing," he said. At a White House ceremony welcoming seven of the Americans freed from Iraq and Kuwait, Bush added: "You don't reward a kidnaper. You don't reward somebody that has done something that he shouldn't have done in the first place."

The hostage saga for Americans in Iraq and Kuwait ended Thursday with the departure of W. Nathaniel Howell III, the U.S. ambassador to Kuwait who held out in his besieged embassy for nearly four months. "The flag flies" there still, Howell said when he arrived in Germany as part of the last planeload of Americans to come out of Iraq.

The U.S. government will pay all the cost of evacuating American citizens from Iraq and Kuwait, without asking the evacuees to contribute, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said Wednesday. A department official said, however, that some U.S. government officials may have erroneously asked some evacuees to sign promissory notes covering air fares. But the official said the notes were contrary to Bush Administration policy, and "we don't intend to try to collect."